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but as he wrote to Edward Bowman, the hot Sydney sun before the voyage killed the 
leader of the largest plant; rounding the Cape, when the cabin temperature dropped 
to 38° F and a parrot perished, Crinitm and Haemanthus plants, as well as Boronia 
microphi/lla died in the frost and snow, though a species of Brachychiton and the 
Moreton Bay jasmines {'/■ bidwillii' and an unnamed climbing one with ternate leaves) 
did not suffer, two of the bunya-bunya trees having produced new shoots though no 
planted seeds had germinated, and his gladioli seemed to be coming into flower at 
sea. He also had New Zealand plants, but he feared for them in crossing the tropics 
and had fixed up blue calico blinds on the cases so that they could be drawn down 
over the sunny side. To while way the time he got a fellow passenger to teach him 
the rudiments of drawing. 
With the surviving plants and a letter of introduction from King he met Sir William 
Hooker, now Director of Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, who published Araucaria 
bidwillii in volume 2 of his London Journal of Botany (1843: 498, tt. 18, 19). Hooker 
acknowledged 'J-T. Bidwill' as having sent material to the Linnean Society of London 
(Australian Herbarium now dispersed, largely to Kew in 1915), and now bringing not 
only dried material but also a liHng specimen to England. By reference to his herbarium 
specimens sent to Hooker, he was able to establish his priority in the New Zealand 
plant discoveries. He gave (probably for exchange) seeds of many plants to Hooker for 
the gardens at Kew but many of his most striking imports were put into a sale held 
by the natural history auctioneer, J.C. Stevens, in London on 18 July 1843''*. This sale 
included plants sent from Guatemala, principally orchids which fetched a high price 
and eclipsed Bidwill's lots. Although his new species of Dendrobiuin, D. kingianitm 
(Orchidaceae), the variable pink rock orchid named after King by BidwUl (though 
pubhshed by Lindley) and held to have been collected in the Buckets west of Gloucester 
in 1839 (Adams & Lawson 1995: 1), went to Loddiges” for £4 10/-, the Araucaria 
bidruillii was bought in at 20 guineas, as was 'an extraordinary plant of Acrostichum 
grande’ for 10 guineas. Lots that sold included one of the jasmines at £1 18/- and, from 
New Zealand, his Easter orchid collected near Rotorua, Earina autumnalis (E. suaveolens) 
which went again to Loddiges^' (both this and the Dendrobiuin appear in Loddiges's 
1844 catalogue of orchids) for £2 8/- and three species of Clematis, one at £1 6/- 
another £1 2/- and a third at £1 12/-. Small seedlings of a ‘Dacrydium’ sp. went for 
£1 6/- each. Later he seems to have tried to persuade the Dukes of Northumberland 
(Syon House) and Devonshire (Chatsworth) to take some of the withdrawn lots but it 
is unclear whether these collectors bought his plants, especially the 'Acrostichum', i.e. 
Platycerium, which may have gone to Veitch at Exeter^. However, it may well have 
been the 'Acrostichum grande’, i.e. Platycerium superbum. Queen Victoria much admired 
during one of her frequent visits to Kew^^ for John Smith noted that when the liv'ing 
plant of the bunya-bunya pine sent by woodcutters at Moreton Bay to Bidwill with a 
reserve of £25 [sic] but with no bids was bought in he got it for Kew where it was some 
4m tall by 1863, when it was moved to the 'Winter Garden' where it later bore cones. 
During his stay in Britain, Bidwill went to see Robert Brown at the British Museum^ 
and Hooker introduced him to Dean Herbert^, the acknowledged expert on plant 
hybridization and especially on many petaloid monocotyledons, who later 
commemorated Bidwill in the genus Bidwillia (= ?; see Appendix). In the autumn ot 
1843, Herbert gave him live material including seeds of several Gladiolus species, three 
of them including G. imbricatus being allegedly new to Australia: some of the resultant 
seedlings raised in NSW were passed on to King m due course^. Many of Bidwill's 
hybrid gladioli raised in Australia were rare in Britain^ but his supposed cross between 
species of Crinum and Amaryllis was thought by Herbert to be merely a young plant of 
C. flaccidum, so, at Herbert's suggestion (it would not flower for many years), Bidwill 
took it back to Australia! Herbert later discussed Bidwill's work in print (Herbert 1847). 
